Not even J.R. Ewing could have improved on how Stephen Harper dispatched his longstanding enemies at Elections Canada and with something so innocuous sounding: the Fair Elections Act.
With euphemism, stealth, and his peculiar brand of blunt-object strategizing, Harper also took a few more bricks out of Canadian democracy.
In at least one case, he took a chisel to the foundations — removing the investigatory function from Elections Canada regarding electoral cheating and effectively handing it over to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
There were some good things in Bill C-23 — the elimination of the easily corruptible practise of vouching, tighter rules for robocalls, and harsher fines for preventing someone from voting. But with this prime minister, there is always a catch. In this legislation, it is the way Harper has disbanded EC’s investigative arm.
Once that power is passed over to the Public Prosecutor, all roads lead to the PMO — just the way Harper likes it. Elections Canada reported to Parliament; the DPP reports directly to the government in power. One venue is public, the other private. In that one move, we have probably seen the last investigation into a government member’s election expenses — unless they finance their campaigns by directly removing gold bars from the Mint.
From now on, Parliament will simply never know — because Harper holds all information close. Who knows? Even Dean del Mastro might rise Lazarus-like from the muck of Peterborough politicking if they figure out a way to make all this stuff retroactive.
And dodgy stuff it is. The incumbent party in each riding gets to appoint the supervisor of the poll. The chief electoral officer can’t speak to Canadians. The so-called “reform” legislation still bars Elections Canada from delving into the books of parties or riding associations. And despite the obvious need, EC investigators still have no power of subpoena when dealing with suspected election cheats.
I give you The Fair Elections Act, another bumper-sticker misnomer from the man who perfected neo-con sloganeering while he was chief propagandist at the National Citizens Coalition. You know — the guys who think your average Canadian operates with a 10-word vocabulary and has the temperament of a rabid dog.
Remember the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act? And the Safe Streets and Communities Act? And who could forget The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers thing? In order, and for the record, what these pieces of legislation were really about is: 1) no due process for some; 2) more cops to keep the plankton people in line; 3) more Internet surveillance and censorship.
And now the Fair Elections Act. Soon, we will all being doing it Harper’s Way. Yes, when this bill gets rammed through Parliament like cheap food down the gullets of factory chickens, big cheaters and big spenders will all be wearing smiles.
Elections will be for sale even more than they are now, and uncovering corruption will be harder. Harper won’t have to worry about getting caught cheating any more as the Conservatives were in the In-and-Out scandal, and in countless individual cases such as that of disgraced cabinet minister Peter Penashue.
On the financial side of the Fair Elections Act, the foxes have just slipped into the chicken coop. Harper once took the issue of third-party advertising all the way to the Supreme Court. The entire case was about getting around spending limits during elections, just the way they do in the United States. How else is a person to operate in the expensive world of bait-and-hate politics? Fortunately, the wise judges ruled against him.
But with this piece of legislation, Harper achieves something of a delayed victory. There is a cool extra million dollars for parties to spend at election time, provided that they run a full slate of candidates.
But since the bill will exempt money spent on fundraising activities from campaign spending, the sky is now the limit. As former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley told the Canadian Press, one of the obvious costs of running a campaign is fundraising.
If it is an expense, why make an exception of it? There is only one answer. The Conservatives are spending a lot of money on fundraising and don’t want anyone to know how much. No one likes to think that democracy is for sale, right?
The losers in all this? The average, semi-comatose, tuned-out, politics-averse believer of the Con-bull that all is well in our strong, stable government. If you count strong-arming, the Cons are strong. And it could be said that the government is stable — a horse stable.
Once this bill is law, Canada’s chief electoral officer will have felt the castrator’s blade. Worse, Harper will have ruined another officer of Parliament who dared do his job, with the extra bonus that one more independent source of information has been institutionally decommissioned.
How odd that the very people who were called “serial cheaters” this week by Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair are now rewriting the mandate of the office that runs elections and vouches for their integrity. The people who were the problem are providing the solution, which in normal language is called being judge in your own cause. A dubious principle in law and politics.
Could the monumental payback against Elections Canada be more obvious? Is this what the agency gets for raiding Conservative party headquarters looking for evidence of corruption? For holding the CPC and its officers to account for fraud? Faced with a widespread attempt at voter fraud by someone using CPC data and making fraudulent robocalls, Canada’s chief electoral officer asked for a stronger mandate, more investigators and the power of subpoena.
He needed them. Since 2006, the Conservatives have been cheating on advertising limits and falsifying spending reports in every election. Instead of helping Mayrand, Harper clotheslined him. His powers have been reduced, he has been fitted with a standard public service muzzle, and a government employee now selects the Commissioner, not an independent officer of Parliament.
Even for a man in thrall to the idiot joy of ideology, it wasn’t enough for Minister of State Pierre Poilievre to merely introduce his Save My Colleagues Act without even consulting with Canada’s chief electoral officer. He also had to slander Marc Mayrand with a scurrilous remark about being biased against the government. Even for a political gutter-dweller, this was a low blow.
Kevin Page, crushed. Linda Keen, crushed. Munir Sheikh, crushed. Richard Colvin, crushed. Marc Mayrand, crushed. Even the RCMP were told last April that they couldn’t talk to parliamentarians without getting prior approval from the government. This Vic Toews, since retired, called it a “communications protocol”. He was merely doing what Harper demands from everyone: marching to the beat laid down by the leader.
Like the Herringbones, Canada needs a new drummer.
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